Not So Dead: A Sam Sunborn Novel

by Charles Levin

  “OK. That’s in two hours. Keep me posted on any movement from the CIA and FBI targets you are tracking. There is always a risk of exposure and we have to be ready.” The Cub looked up at the red dots on the screen and at the two men at the door in camo holding RPG launchers at their sides.

  He walked over to the galley and poured himself a black coffee from the half-empty pot. He mused over the fact that the first known webcam was of a coffee maker on the first floor of an office building in Cambridge, UK. Engineers on the top floor had designed it so they could look online and see if there was coffee ready downstairs. That way they didn’t have to walk down and find an empty pot. We’ve come a long way since then, he thought.

  He sipped the coffee and winced. “This American coffee is shit!”

  CHAPTER 61

  ROOK TO QUEEN EIGHT

  Little, Favor, six armed FBI marksman and I jumped on the Take Down, a twenty-meter Coast Guard cutter, docked at the South Street Seaport. We had a fix on the Last Chance. In under five minutes, we could engage. I hoped we had enough manpower and firepower to handle it. Little assured me these guys were the best. It didn’t hurt that there were a dozen Coast Guard personnel deployed with weapons on deck as well. The cutter also had a 50mm cannon at the ready. I always enjoyed reading thrillers from Morrell, Thor and Clancy. I just never thought I’d be in one.

  My thoughts drifted. I remembered driving down a dirt road along the river. The sky had cotton ball clouds against a pale blue ether. I rolled down my window to take in the sound of the rushing water as it spilled over the ice age boulders strewn randomly within its banks. There was peace…and quiet. So what was I doing on this boat in the East River rushing to confront a maniacal terrorist? How had I gotten here? Maybe it was a dream.

  I turned to Little. “What’s the plan? Do we just attack? I don’t see how we take these guys alive.”

  Little turned to me just as some sea spray wafted over the side and showered us. He didn’t seem to notice. His eyes told me he was in another place—some higher plane where hunters are at one with their prey. “The problem is that he may literally have his fingers on the detonator. I’m thinking he is not suicidal like his crazy, gullible brethren. So we may be able to confront him and make some kind of ‘bargain.’”

  “You’re joking, right?” I was stunned.

  “We just need to buy some time, create a momentary diversion or we’re fucked.”

  Even though the Last Chance was fast, our cutter was faster. It was like a souped-up, hot rod sea rocket. We quickly approached from the rear and then pulled along the starboard side. Our skipper pulled at the mic on the cutter’s dash and clicked the talk button. The speaker on the bow boomed, “This is the US Coast Guard. All crew must appear on deck immediately. We will board in sixty seconds.”

  All we could see were two men on deck holding AK-47s at their sides. All our weapons were up and pointed at them. I had a bad feeling about this. The skipper continued. “Please have your captain come up and step to the rail.”

  An American in a Navy-like uniform and captain’s hat stepped to the rail with a megaphone. “I am Ronald Sith, Captain of the Last Chance. How can we help you gentlemen?”

  “We need to board and inspect your vessel. Please have your men lower their weapons.” The captain hand signaled and the two men on deck lowered their weapons.

  I could smell the salt air and felt more spray on my face. The scene was surreal. It felt like the director was going to yell, “Cut” and we’d all break for a nice buffet lunch. But this was really real and we were really there. I’m not a military guy, but I was thinking how I could help. I was good at solving puzzles, and we were in the middle of a big one. Maybe it was more like a chess game, and each side was taking turns making moves and trying to trap the opponent.

  I turned to Little. “Tell our guys to lower their weapons and have our boat slowly put some distance between us and them.”

  “What are you talking about? We’re about to board?”

  “Trust me. Rook to Queen Eight—they are about to launch a surprise attack.”

  Something in my eyes and maybe in the air made sense to Little. “Captain, slowly lower your weapons and move at about half-speed away from their boat.”

  Our captain, Jeremy Agnus, turned his gray eyes to Little and looked puzzled but followed the directive. He raised an outstretched arm and slowly lowered it. Our guys lowered their weapons in unison. We could hear the churning of our engines as we seemed to slowly drift away from the Last Chance.

  Just as we were putting some distance between the two ships, two more men appeared on their deck. Dark haired, bearded and smiling. Not happy smiles, more like smirks. The captain of the Last Chance nodded and took a step back from the rail. The two bearded men raised their arms holding RPGs. They stepped to the rail and aimed straight at us. My mouth fell open. There was an eerie silence. Then they pulled their triggers and we heard a burst and whoosh. Two rocket propelled grenades streaked toward us.

  CHAPTER 62

  RETURN FIRE

  The rockets raced each other toward the Take Down, trailing a cloud of acrid smoke and flame. The Take Down’s captain barked an order to “Hard right” and the first rocket landed two feet from the bow exploding on impact with the water. The boat rocked back and water sprayed the deck. Maybe “spray” is the wrong word. More like a tidal wave washed over the deck soaking all standing there. The second rocket hit our port side at about a forty-five degree angle and exploded, rocking the Take Down like a small sailboat heeling to starboard. We all grabbed the rails and hung on for dear life.

  Then the boat rebounded and we rocked back to port side. We crashed against the rails. I saw one of our guys fly headfirst over the rail into the cold water below. Somebody yelled, “Man overboard!” and I saw life preservers on ropes flying over the side. I had no idea how any human beings could react so fast, but these guys were good and obviously highly trained.

  Our captain yelled again, “Damage report?”

  We heard crackling over the deck speaker and, “One minute please.” Then, “We have two men down below deck. Unconscious, but with a pulse.” A pause. “The port armor seems to have taken the brunt of the blast and held, but we are taking on some water. Not critical.” Fortunately, the Take Down is a high endurance cutter that happened to be on loan from Charleston. A lesser unarmored ship would have been dead in the water.

  The captain’s next command was, “Return fire!” The 50mm cannon rotated on its turret aiming at the deck of the Last Chance. Apparently the gunmen on the deck had reloaded. Just as they were raising their RPGs to fire again, a flurry of shells from our cannon hit the deck of the Last Chance and the men flew into the air. Weapons and body parts sprayed in all directions. The upper cabin was heavily damaged and the Last Chance bobbed in the water like the little red and white fishing bobbers you might remember as a kid.

  Next from the captain: “Hold fire. All crew of Last Chance take notice. You have thirty seconds to appear on deck or we will put you on the bottom of the river. This is your last and final warning.” Nobody moved. There was silence.

  CHAPTER 63

  RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP

  The Cub had ordered the RPG attack on the Take Down and felt the impact of the hit to his Last Chance. He shouted, “Report!” to the wheelhouse.

  The speaker overhead clicked on. “We have taken extensive damage up top. Our shooters are gone. The assholes are demanding all hands on deck or they blow us out of the water in twenty seconds.”

  The Cub, who was standing in the control room below, didn’t hesitate. “Go, go!” he shouted to his young crew of computer hackers. He pushed and shoved them to go up the ladder steps to the deck. Then he turned to the one man in the room who had not been at a computer and was dressed like a seaman. “Simpson, let’s go.”

  While the computer kids hustled up the steps, Simpson and the Cub, headed in the opposite direction to a door in the stern. They opened the door and jumped
in the Oceangate Cyclops 2 submersible sitting open on the launching deck that hung from the stern. Without speaking, Simpson secured the hatch. The Cub barked, “Let’s get out of here!” Simpson pushed a button and the Cyclops dropped into the water hardly making a splash. In less than five seconds, it went under with a small trail of bubbles rising and then disappearing on the surface.

  “Where to now?” Simpson asked.

  “Bring up the GPS and Side-Scan SONAR.” After the two screens lit up, the Cub pointed to a spot on the GPS about ten miles offshore. They still had to get themselves down the East River and out to sea, but they had the advantage of stealth. “As they say, run silent, run deep and get us there.”

  Simpson flipped a switch and the Cyclops dashboard went dim, the dials hardly visible. The engine became silent although the propellers continued to push them forward. They had a head start but knew their lead wouldn’t last long once their pursuers figured out what they were doing.

  The Cub followed the green dot on the screen that represented their submersible as it slowly moved down river to the harbor. The red dot that represented the Take Down remained stationary. That could mean one of three things. Either the Take Down was so damaged they could not move, they knew about the Cyclops and called in backup, or hopefully, they hadn’t figured it out yet. Just a little more time and good fortune and they might actually get away.

  CHAPTER 64

  BACKSCATTER

  Their remaining crew and the computer geeks slowly emerged, hands up, on the deck of the Last Chance. Agnus called out orders. “Approach at half-speed. Keep that 50 cal trained on the deck. Prepare to board.”

  Little looked at me with a blank expression. Something still didn’t feel right, but it seemed like we were out of immediate danger. He broke the silence. “We need to get on that ship and look for that captain and maybe LaSalam now.”

  Agnus handed Little and me loaded M-14s, lighter than M-16s but still deadly. “Get ready.” The Take Down slowly approached the Last Chance, and I heard the engines cut and then reverse. We drifted alongside and our crew tossed three lines to the deck and the Last Chance’s crew anchored the lines to cleats on deck. Since our deck was a little higher but almost even with theirs, our guys slid a ten foot steel plank through the rails and let it drop on the gunnel of the Last Chance. We anchored our end and Little began to step onto the plank, but Agnus grabbed his arm and pulled him back. “We go first to secure the vessel. Then you go.” Although Little could be pushy when he needed to be, he understood the value of protocol, particularly in hostile situations. He nodded and backed away.

  Al, who had been quiet all this time, cornered Little and me. “If our killer is or was on that boat, how would he protect himself or get away in a situation like this?”

  Little raised his eyebrows. “What makes you think he got away?”

  “Do you see anyone on that deck that looks even vaguely like our guy? How about that Captain Sith, where’s he?”

  “Hmm, well they’re either below deck or they got away?”

  Being ever the optimist, I added, “Or they booby-trapped the ship and plan to blow us all up.”

  Little seemed to take this all in. “I doubt the bomb. I think we’ve had enough explosions for one day, but it doesn’t hurt to be sure.” Agnus was just then leading his guys onto the plank. “Agnus! You have any bomb detection equipment or dogs you can bring with?”

  Agnus halted his guys. “Chief Thomas, grab the Seeker before you guys proceed.” Thomas disappeared below deck and returned with a black handheld device that looked like a voltage meter. “Lieutenant Reagan, can you get any infrared or backscatter below decks? We need to know if anybody’s down there?” Backscatter is some very cool technology a friend of mine at MIT had developed that allows you to detect organic matter, like people or drugs, inside shipping containers or trucks or in this case, inside a ship. The military was very quick to see its usefulness.

  Reagan came back on the Coms. “Negative on the infrared and backscatter. I don’t think anybody’s down there.”

  “OK Thomas. Turn that thing on and take the lead.”

  Little put down his M-14. “They’re gone.”

  Al was right, but so now what? “OK, how would they get away?”

  I was only too happy to play the straight man or foil in this case. “They could have had a dinghy slip away from the stern of the ship.”

  “No—too visible and too slow,” Little said.

  “Well I didn’t see a helicopter. How about SCUBA?”

  Al lit up. “That’s it. No, I mean not SCUBA, but maybe some kind of submersible would be quick and unseen. What do you think?” Another spray of seawater came over the deck as our ship rocked in the choppy water. I felt a wet chill on my face and could taste the salt on my lips.

  Little shouted over to Agnus who was supervising the surrender of the Last Chance crew. “Do you have SONAR on this tub? Er, I mean ship.”

  Agnus grew red-faced. “You call my Take Down a tub again and you can swim to shore.” He calmed himself. “Why? What do you need SONAR for?”

  Little replied, “Where’s our bad guy? Where’s their captain for that matter?”

  Agnus opened his lips roundly as if to say, “Oh,” but nothing came out.

  CHAPTER 65

  CUT IT NOW

  The Cyclops moved quietly down the East River under the Manhattan Bridge, then the Brooklyn Bridge. A few minutes later in deeper water, it passed under the Verrazano and out to sea. Almost an hour passed. The Cub looked attentively at the green screen as the dot representing them moved closer to the X marking their destination.

  “We’re two minutes out,” said the Cub.

  “Slow to half speed and deploy the claw.” As the craft slowed, an arm slowly emerged from the belly of the beast. It looked like a miniature version of the working arm of a backhoe. But instead of a bucket at the end, it had something that looked like a lobster claw.

  Simpson maneuvered the stick that controlled the craft in three dimensions. He pulled it slightly left to turn to port. Then he pushed it slightly forward to start a slow dive. “We’re at the target in 5…4…3…2…1.” He pulled back on the stick and cut the engine.

  The Cub’s face almost burned red with focus and intensity. “Engage the claw.” The claw dropped to the ocean floor, kicking up a cloud of silt. Then Simpson inched the claw along the ocean floor until it wrapped its pincers around a fat cable. The cable extended east and west as far as the eye could see in the clear water.

  The Cub licked his dry lips. “Cut it now!”

  CHAPTER 66

  REWIND

  Agnus led us down the steep ladder to below deck. We walked along a narrow hallway, stepped over a metal step into the communications room. Four shipmen were crammed into a close space, staring at monitors. There was hardly enough room for us to stand. I could feel my claustrophobia kick in. The dark, the wet, the cold had all the makings of a nightmare scenario.

  Agnus broke the silence. “What have you got?”

  A young face, almost too young to drive, looked up and then back at the screen. “We have nothing now, but I was able to rewind the last twenty minutes.”

  Al said, “You can rewind?”

  The young man, eyes still on the screen, answered, “Yeah, it’s kinda like your DVR. Even if you’re not watching or recording, it stores the last hour or so in memory. We were looking for incoming not outgoing so we missed this.” He tapped a key on his keyboard and the screen flickered. He pointed to two green shapes. “That’s the Last Chance and that’s us about twenty minutes ago.” He hit another key and we saw a small green dot emerge from the Last Chance and move down river.

  “Fuck, that’s them,” Little exclaimed. “Can you track where they went?”

  “Our range is about a mile, but once they clear the harbor, we lose them.”

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  CHAPTER 67

  SIGNAL LOST

  Hager, Osborne, the chie
fs of staff and various other security staff were assembled in the Situation Room, briefing the president. She looked tense. She rhythmically tapped a pen on the table with impatience as various generals and directors gave their reports. She was old-school. She always had a yellow legal pad and pen in front of her to take notes. After the hassle with her email account getting hacked by the Russians, she was even more disinclined to commit her thoughts to the digital universe.

  Osborne was next. “As you can see on the center screen, we have a satellite over the East River.” He used his laser pointer. “Those are the two boats we’re tracking. The Last Chance that we believed might have LaSalam and possibly a WMD aboard and our guys on the Take Down, here.”

  Longford looked at the wall of OLED screens showing various angles of the scene as well as several other locations they were tracking. “I hear past-tense. I don’t need a back story. Just tell me what’s happening now. Do we have the situation contained?”

  Osborne looked down sheepishly at his notes and took a deep breath. “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?”

  Longford exploded. “Are you kidding me? Do you think we’re all children here? Stop playing games and just spit it out! And when this is all over, you and I are going to have a serious talk.” She blew out an audible breath trying to calm herself.

  Osborne turned five shades of red, cleared his throat and spoke in an emotionless voice, “At 11:00, the Take Down took RPG fire. She returned fire and subdued the Last Chance. We believe that LaSalam was aboard. We have boarded their ship. We did a full search and found that he and Alec Simpson were no longer aboard. A rewind of the Take Down’s SONAR showed some kind of submersible leaving the Last Chance and heading south to the harbor and probably out to sea. We have dispatched several ‘Midnight Express’ Cutters and Sikorsky MH-60 Jayhawks to search the five-mile perimeter around the harbor. We figure they had a twenty-minute head start. If we don’t locate them in the next ten minutes, the search area becomes so large that the odds of intercept become very low.”